Vasili’s mouth ticked. A tell. He recognized it now. A tiny imperfection in the perfect act. Some part of the real Vasili acknowledged his words, but he couldn’t determine if it was good or bad.
“That fear is useless. I agree,” Niko said. He knelt the way Vasili had knelt while Niko had bathed. The prince’s gaze never left his face. Niko dangled his fingers into the bath water, again mimicking Vasili, and watched the prince’s brow tighten. His cheek jumped.
Niko knew from rumors, as well as from Vasili’s brother, that the prince didn’t like to be touched. This wasn’t touching, but it was something. And Vasili clearly felt he couldn’t reprimand Niko without revealing too much of that fear.
“The elf…” Niko prompted again, bringing them back around to the topic at hand. “Someone left a small side gate open for him.”
Vasili’s lashes fluttered down. “Amir, probably. Or a servant, someone I insulted or a soldier who despises me? My aunt perhaps, she’s been with Amir—”
“Your aunt?”
“Lady Maria.”
Of course. Niko freed a short, sharp laugh. Maria—the woman who had helped him focus himself during Amir’s orgy.
“My aunt is amusing to you, Niko?” Vasili pushed forward suddenly, cutting through the water, and then began to climb from the steps.
Niko straightened. He dared not move or look away, or look down, so he fixed the prince’s eye with his glare. He wished he hadn’t when a challenge lurked in the prince’s glare, daring him to hold his gaze.
Absolutely naked, Vasili turned away, padded bare-assed along the side of the bath, and scooped up a gown. Rivulets of water ran from the long, wet hair plastered to his back and into the crack of his tight ass. The backs of his thighs weren’t scarred like the fronts. All the princes were tall, but Vasili had a willowy elegance to him that belied toned muscle. He was a contradiction of a man.
Vasili threw the gown over his shoulders, disrupting the view.
Niko swallowed. Why was his throat dry?
Vasili turned—gown fully open—and gathered up his hair, pulling it free from inside the gown’s collar. The shifting musculature of his chest made the scars glisten. If he’d been afraid to reveal them before, he certainly wasn’t now. They travelled all the way down to his hips.
A rose petal clung to his hip, and suddenly it was all Niko could see: a soft pink velvet kiss on the prince’s pale skin.
“Did you believe the elves had taken my cock, mercenary?”
Niko closed his mouth. He could deny looking, but because Vasili had fucking said the word, Niko looked, and shit. Now heat rushed up Niko’s neck and face. He had wondered about the cock thing, seeing as people in the palace liked to fuck anything that moved. Vasili didn’t. Nobody touched him either. Except Niko at the pleasure house, and again on the prince’s bed.
Vasili’s cock was normal. Generous, even. Not a viper. Didn’t have fangs.
“Look me in the eye, Nikolas.”
Niko blinked. He’d been staring like a fucking fool. He looked down into the pool. “You’re all fucking insane.”
Vasili was suddenly close, the warm smell of wet skin and roses tickling Niko’s nose. Steam rose off the prince; he tasted it on his lips.
“Look at me.” An order.
Vasili’s gaze drilled into him. The prince was intimately close now, his eye observing, reading Niko’s face, studying him. Looking for the best place to thrust a blade, no doubt.
“Thank you,” Vasili said.
Niko didn’t know what to say. Vasili left, and the door clunked closed. Niko’s heart thumped too damned hard, sending hot blood through his veins, as well as to other places.
“Sweet fucking gods.” Niko ran a trembling hand through his wet hair. Why was it every time he spoke with Vasili he was left feeling like the bastard had rooted around in his soul and torn out his vulnerabilities?
It took too long to quench the way his body burned and slow his heart from its wild gallop. Yet again, he hadn’t gotten the answers he needed.
He turned toward the door, but paused. Vasili wasn’t going to answer his questions. Amir was a fucking bastard who Niko would attack on sight. But there was another Caville. One he’d recently met who might be more forthcoming.
Lady Maria.
Chapter 14
Lady Caville welcomed Niko into her receiving chambers with a breezy smile. “Darling,” she purred. “Is it possible you look even more delectable in clothes?”
Her teasing appeared harmless, instantly making him breathe easier.
She waved him in, told him to sit, and poured wine without asking. “I hear you were stabbed? Gallantly chased my nephew’s attacker across Loreen’s rooftops. So heroic.”
He sat in the offered chair at the window across a small table from her position. “Heroic? No. Just reactive. I lost the attacker and almost died for my efforts.” He gestured at his chest.
“So modest. I see why he likes you.” Niko would have asked who she referred to, but she had already moved on. He let her talk, accepted the wine, and casually scanned her room. There had been no mention of a Lord Caville but he assumed Maria must have married in to be living within the palace walls and in such fine chambers. He tried to recall his own attempt at recreating the Caville family tree.
“A thinker,” she mused after his too long in silence. “Yes, it’s all falling into place.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Vasili’s attraction to you.”
He laughed suddenly, caught off guard. “There isn’t such a thing.”
“Oh, attraction doesn’t have to be physical. There’s more to desire than sex.”
Was there? Niko wasn’t sure he could agree, but with Maria he felt open to being persuaded, especially as she appeared to understand his preference for men, and was unlikely to be a threat—at least in the bedroom. Unlike Amir. He instantly warmed to this woman’s honesty. If she had married into the Cavilles, that surely made her formidable.
“So why are you here?” she asked, leaning back in her chair. She wore layers of colored silk draped around her. The color matched well with Amir’s similar love of all things bright and beautiful. Did she know her nephew wanted to fuck her? “I assume it’s something to do with the darling Vasili.”
Darling was not a word he associated with Vasili. “Someone is trying to kill him.”
“Yes, it does appear that way,” she replied grimly. “Thankfully, he’s not so easily killed.” The glass in her hand shook a little.
“Tell me about him.”
“About Vasili? By the time I arrived at the palace he was already missing.”
“Missing?”
She waved. “Away. You know, gone.”
“His absence wasn’t planned?”
“Gods, no,” she gasped. “Poor, dear.”
“Then where was he?”
She sipped her wine and peered at him over her glass. So that question wasn’t one she could or would answer. “I knew what everyone else knew,” she continued. “He’s the eldest, the most level, the leader of the three. Did you know he could sing, as a child? It was quite something, apparently.”